Sunday, June 12, 2016

Orlando Shooting

Just a thought tonight really. This murder in Orlando is depressing. It is depressing that a human being thinks that killing innocent people is a valid idea. It is equally depressing that I don’t think we are going to solve this problem any time soon. To the contrary, I suspect that you are about to hear the usual suspect pointing fingers at their pet projects... guns did it! Islam did it! It was anti-gay Christians! It was racism! It was men! It was the lack of a living wage! It was W Bush!

The thing is, each shooter is different. Most are simply sexually dysfunctional pathetics who want to feel powerful and important. To stop them, the Media needs to stop turning them into heroes. But that won’t happen because the Media refuses to accept any responsibility for its own actions.

Some are shooting people they know. This can only be combated by people being more perceptive of those around them and realizing when people are starting to draw near the edge. The system also needs to support these people by taking more notice of people who are becoming threats. I would also add that we need to tone down the violence in our culture. Hollywood in particular sells the idea of violence as a solution to anything. And we need to teach kids alternative means for solving the problems that arise in their lives.

Some are just crazies. These are people who kill because their inner voices told them to. To stop these people, we need to change the laws to let the system have greater control over people who are mental, and we need to make mental health professionals more willing to take action and not hide behind the diagnosis “subject seems to lack actual intent to turn words into deeds.” I've seen that three times in my professional live, each time before a killing. We also need to finally accept the fact that certain people simply should never be free to roam about society. Not everyone can be saved.

Finally, some are political or religious. This guy appears to fall into this category, with a nod to sexual dysfunction. His cause, from all appearances, is radical Islam’s cult of victimization.

The thing is, a lot of people will be tempted to scream for a military solution (if you’re conservative) or a policing solution (if you’re an idiot liberal). But you can’t solve this problem in that manner. The idea of policing is idiotic because policing is about picking up the peaces after the fact. That doesn’t help us here.

As for a military solution, you can’t kill an idea by killing people. The only way to stop radical Islam from going to war with the West is to reform Islam to remove its victimhood core and its focus on conquest. It needs to reform itself to accept the fact that other religions are perfectly fine and that their existence does not threaten it. It also needs to stop promising goodies in exchange for doing harm, and it needs to stop treating nonbelievers with disdain. And that change can only happen by a concerted effort of Muslims to stop accepting the legitimacy of people like ISIS and all these radical clerics.

Also, for those who think a military option is a good one, keep in mind that you can’t kill people who show no signs of being on the other side until they act. Guys like this fool do not appear on battlefields, they don’t undergo training. They live seemingly normal lives, often times not even religious appearing lives, until they decide to act. It’s like an accountant deciding one day to rob a bank. You can’t stop people like that in advance unless you take away the reward they think they can get. This is a demand side problem, not a supply side problem that can be fixed by stemming the supply of money or killing the people... you need to stop them from wanting to do it in the first place.

Sadly, I don’t think any of these changes will ever be made. There are too many vested interests in advocating the same stupid solutions over and over. It’s easy. It gets votes. It fits the political leanings of the advocates.

30 comments:

Divining intent is damn tough and mistakes will always be made, but the shooter was a young Muslim guy with a history of making terrorist threats, had been close buddies with at least one suicide bomber, was a wife-beater and was obsessed with homosexuality and one of his male coworkers (contacting him 50 times a day until the guy quit to get away from him).

Its not a big deal, but a lot of guys like him do die on battlefields. As I pointed out yesterday, a lot of American Muslims die abroad. You'd think they would die here, but many come to their radicalism only over time and part of their journey involves travel to some terrorist hotspot.

Liberals and Muslims often whine that by actively sweeping up young Muslim men who talk about their hatred of America and plans to kill, the government is 'alienating' Muslims. Look at the tone of the three articles. The Fox article is an honest discussion of the problem, the Washington Post article is more sympathetic in tone (perhaps too sympathetic) but also honest and the Minnesota Tribune article is just plain old dishonest, denying the existence of a terror problem.

There are at least 40 Americans – far more than previously believed – actively serving in the Islamist terror group Al Shabaab, including dozens of radicalized killers from Minnesota’s prominent Somali-American community, experts told Fox News.

Approximately 40 Americans are actively serving in the ranks of the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group responsible for dozens of attacks and hundreds of deaths in East Africa, multiple experts confirmed. The number is at least 10 times previous estimates, and underscores a grim radicalization threat that has operated largely in the shadow of ISIS’ recruiting.

Although Somali immigrants have lived here for more than two decades, they remain a people apart. The older generation struggles with English. At a recent soccer tournament, parents conferred in Somali on the sidelines, while referees and coaches shouted in Somali to the players. Minnesota has Somali TV channels and a new Somali radio station.

The younger generation is fluent in English but often adrift between old and new worlds. The Islamic State tries to lure them, federal authorities and some community leaders say, with sleek videos projecting power, camaraderie and a clear identity.

Those videos ensnared Mohamed, Adnan and their friends, according to the FBI, which tracked the young men for nearly a year. The group was largely self-radicalized, the government says, by watching Islamic State videos at home, in cars and in a local mosque.

This has been a disorienting, enraging and divisive experience for many in the Somali community, and for those of us close to the families and friends, the verdict comes as no surprise. Nobody expected these young men to get a fair trial — not in this political climate, not with the shrewd manipulations by the FBI, not with their skin color, not with their religion.

What have we learned? We know that these young men are not violent; we know the victims have been Somali people; we know ISIL is not extreme religious ideology but blowback from the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the brutality of Nouri al-Maliki and Bashar Assad; we know there is no “jihadi pipeline” in Minnesota created from a vast array of ISIL recruiters; we know these young men were hypermotivated to help victims in Syria; we know they experienced poverty, racism and Islamophobia; we know they needed a welcoming city where they could make the world a better place, and we know that Minnesota failed them.

I apologize for the somewhat rambling tone of the prior post. I was typing as I thought. One thought I should have inserted is that the government scoops up a lot of losers like the shooter all the time, and there is (or was, prior to this latest incident) an active debate about how aggressive it should be in corralling said losers. After Orlando, I think its safe to say there will be fewer civil liberties protests.

However, I agree that we won't see massive policy changes as a result of this shooting.

"We've reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer."

Yeeeaaahhh, riiiiiight. Sorry, Mr. President, "we" have, and a good chunk of your fanbase hasn't figured out why your usual rush to judgment hasn't got the White House all lit up like a rainbow yet. They're also likely waiting for your wife to launch a hashtag campaign before proceeding any further.

As a former two-time Orlando resident with friends in the area (including LGBT folks), this one hit a bit close to home.

Having said that, not to sound too cynical, but nothing will change. Someone tweeted a graph from Google and the average was about two months from tragedy to when the searches completely fall off to near zero. Virginia Tech, what happened again?

I don't have faith that politicians will fix the problem, with regards to terrorism, or guns, or suspected terrorists allowed to buy guns.

And while I'm pretty big on compartmentalism in my life (for better or worse!), the mental gymnastics shown by some of these politicians is insane. Really, Mike Huckabee? Don't pretend you actually give a shit about a group of people you demonize the other 364 days of the year.

Eric, As they always say, the first step in solving is a problem is admitting you have a problem. Obama and the Democrats refuse to admit there is a problem.

As an aside, I wonder if events like this will speed up the driving away of gays from the left. It's hard to stick with a group who is happy to sacrifice you to a predator just to keep their alliance happy.

Scott, This is all hypocrisy, all around. Obama knows what motivated this guy, but for political reasons he can't say it. Huckabee knows that he demonizes gays, but again, he pretends there are no consequences (something the left does with their own pet peeves too, mind you). Hollywood sells violence, but pretends that no one really buys it. Democrats make it impossible to stop people like this legally, but pretend there's nothing that can be done. Islam lets guys like this and the preacher who was in Orlando last week calling for gays to be stoned sell their hate unchallenged, and pretends they have no responsibility for that.

This is why I hate liberals and need to avoid them on days like this. Liberal thinking goes like this... (try to follow along, but stop if your head starts to hurt):

By calling this "radical Islamic terrorism," Trump is evil for politicizing this killing...

... which was a political statement about the hate religious people have for gays...

... because Trump should not have spoken because it is too early to know this man's motives -- other than gay rights and gun access, we have no idea what this can be about! -- and we should not prejudge them until after Obama has concluded his investigation...

...Oh, and Hilary is so brave for breaking from Obama today and calling this "radical Islamic terrorism"...

tryanmax, That's a good point. I see both as an expression of hopelessness. Those asking for a military solution are looking to lash out. Those asking for a policing solution are giving up and hoping that by surrendering, that they leave us alone.

The military solution if there is one, is to destroy ISIS on the ground in Syria and Iraq thoroughly. Make it bloody, make it public, let these little idiots who think they are running off to the circus understand what is waiting for them, no mercy. Honestly, take no prisoners with ISIS, they are criminals of the worst type, hand them over to the Kurds. The FBI knew about this guy, so did the police who investigated his domestic abuse, but he wasn't on any lists. The so called No-Fly List is a joke, thousands of people are on it that should not be...if peaceful Muslims want America to believe that they can be trusted it would help if they would step up to the plate and help the police, it would help if they would speak out..but they don't.

Every time something like this happens and every time the Obama administration and other liberals ignore it, Trump's support rises.

Leadership isn't listening to the people. They are frightened and angry and tired of being told it is their fault. Every day, Trump's Islamic concentration camp looks a little less crazy. Still batshit crazy but a little less.

Critch, I think the military solution is different actually. I think it goes like this...

I think you need a cultural change in Arab nations. To achieve that, I would first support moderate Muslims with secret money (can't be seen helping them), so they and their supporters start to appear more happy and more prosperous. This is to blunt the appeal of extremism and strip the idea that it's "Arabs" versus the West.

The moderates then need to loudly and repeatedly condemn the extremists. Give them no peace.

Then you set up some fake radical groups who will siphon off their supporters and send them down dead ends where they can be killed, who will disgrace the radical agenda with idiotic proclamations, and who will help monitor who is really a radical and who isn't.

Finally, you use secret police disguised as thugs to wipe out the radical groups who are left.

On your general thoughts, well said as always on both the shooters themselves and the solutions nobody wants to look at. As for this shooter, I suspected that might be the case when I heard about his former co-worker quitting because the guy obsessively texted him so it doesn't surprise me at all. As for how the left will spin it? Too easy, Andrew... They'll say he was driven to it by Christian hate and homophobia of course! The Twitter and Tumblr mobs will probably throw in some references to WhiteCisMaleHet oppression and there will be complaints about gun culture too.

He was a very disturbed individual, confused by the conflict between his sexuality and the negative attitudes society (not Islam) has towards homosexuals. He was looking for any reason to lash out, and radical, fanatical, violent, extreme, fringe, crazy, militant jihad (not Islam) provided that reason. But it could just as easily have been mainstream Protestantism. In fact, it probably was Christian bigotry that drove him to ISIS (not Islam). The real issue here is guns. Guns, guns, guns. Nobody should own one. Clearly the Framers were smoking crack when they wrote the 2nd amendment. Who the hell needs a murder stick, anyway? Anyone who likes guns deserves to be shot. All those gun-toting straight white men are happy that it was a Latino gay club that got shot up. They just wish they'd had the stones to do it themselves. If we just got rid of all the straight white men, all of the problems would go away. Vote Hillary!

A much more eloquent version of what I was going for, tryanmax! The only quibbles I have is you left off the "cis" between white and male (the SJWs/delicates have really turned that into a pejorative lately when they go on about privilege and oppression) and it needs a shot at Trump. Depending on the liberal in question they may still be Feeling the Bern instead of being on board with Hillary (though I don't see that lasting much longer).

Guys, Just because it has been alleged (by dozens) that this shooter may have engaged in not completely heterosexual conduct is no reason not to see this as being motivated by Christian hate against gays.

Now, it's way too early to judge anything, but it's obvious that this mostly-heterosexual man of officially undetermined religious and ethnic origin (too early to tell), had a father who was driven mad by the murderous Christian bigotry against gays, who drilled this self-hate into his son (who I remind you we don't know was gay and likely was more heterosexual), and who drove his son to buy guns which is what ultimately caused him to kill those people.

What's more, the reason he choose an Hispanic club was not that he frequented the club (too early to confirm that), it was obviously Trump's talk about exterminating Hispanics which we know motivated him. Clearly, this whitish man was inspired by Trump's hate, by his father's Christian bigotry, and by the guns he bought.

I concur Andrew, it is sad. The media and the left always manage to make a horrible massacre even worse. Just like the so-called terrorist bomber in Chicago whom many lefties just KNEW was a Christian bigot out to blow up trans people.Except she was just an idiotic drug addict who was trying to make more drugs that blew up in her face.The "blast" didn't even go past the stall she was using. Not quite what most lefties were hoping for.